Why?

2.07.2013

Well, THAT didn't take long.

Here in Washington, Marijuana has been legal for about two whole months, and while there isn't yet a system in place to allow the legal growth and distribution of the product, the Powers that Be have already decided that it will be the subject of a 25% tax at each level of handling: Growth, Distribution, and Retail. The math experts out there will realize that this is not a 75% markup, but rather a 95% markup, assuming the taxes are all passed along to the final purchaser.

Okay. I'm not a user of marijuana, for either recreational or medicinal purpose. That doesn't mean I'm a big believer in taxing the heck out of it, even though everyone should have seen this coming. First...I don't think you tax medicine(although, with the number of people that are using medical marijuana for 'insomnia' we can debate just how much legitimate medicinal use is going on). Second...what makes the Legislature think people are going to pay it?

This isn't something like cigarettes, or alcohol, where people are used to going to the store to buy it. You raise the taxes on those, and people will bitch and moan, but they will still go to the store and buy it(unless they live close enough to the Oregon/Idaho border). Marijuana isn't like that. People have been buying that illegally for decades. If they can get it for 50% cheaper, then I think they will keep buying it the way they always have.

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statement

"What did I want?

I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The games' afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin. I wanted Prester John and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon.

I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be -- instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is."
-- Glory Road, Robert Heinlein